Anatomy of a Police Interaction: Citizen Kenny and Officer Branch Blog Post Series – Part 1
The following three blog posts depict police interactions between Citizen Kenny and Officer Branch. The three-part series involves one scenario as it plays out from the beginning of the officer’s shift through the interactions between Citizen Kenny and Officer Branch. The blogs post will discuss investigative stops, reasonable articulable suspicion, probable cause to arrest, and search incident to arrest.
Reasonable Articulable Suspicion for Investigative Stop
Police officers have enormous powers to interfere with citizen movement by detaining citizens when they have a reasonable articulable suspicion that the citizen is, was, or about to engage in criminal activity. The United States Supreme Court provides that reasonable articulable suspicion is more than a “hunch.” Officers cannot interfere with citizen movement based on a feeling that something is wrong.
The Atlanta Police Department policy states that:
“Reasonable Articulable Suspicion to Detain: Reasonable suspicion based on articulable facts and circumstances, which, taken together with reasonable inferences in light of an officer’s training and experience, would cause an officer to conclude that a person is, has been, or is about to be, involved in criminal activity.”
How might this look in the community?
During the morning roll call, Officer Branch received information that citizens were fed up with the open-air drug transactions in front of several local convenient stores. Community members provided three photos of young men standing in front of a convenient store, and a video of one of the young men conducting what appeared to be a hand-to-hand drug transaction.
While on patrol, Officer Branch observes Citizen Kenny standing in front of a store. Every few minutes a person walks by, stops in front of Kenny, and hands him something. Kenny then hands the person something else in return. Officer Branch observes that whenever someone walks up to Kenny, he takes a quick look around before acknowledging the person in front of him and making what appears to be a hand-to-hand drug transaction. Officer Branch notices that Kenny reaches into his waistband each time a person leaves and appears to be adjusting or retrieving something. Officer Branch observes that Kenny never entered the store during the 30 minutes that he watched him.
Considering the above scenario, based on Officer Branch’s training, experience, knowledge of street-level dealing and concealed weapons, and information received during roll call, he determines that he has the articulable facts to approach Kenny for involvement in criminal activity, given that Kenny is observed making multiple brief exchanges with several people that appear to be consistent with drug transactions. Kenny constantly looked around whenever someone approached him before making the exchanges. After each exchange, he reached into his waistband appearing to retrieve something. The observations are specific, and the circumstances are aligned with the information received during his morning roll call. Based on the observed actions and the reasonable inferences that can be drawn from his training and experience, Officer Branch could reasonably conclude that Kenny is dealing drugs in front of the store. Officer Branch would have the reasonable articulable suspicion to approach Kenny for an investigative stop.
Officer Branch approaches Kenny to conduct an investigative stop. In the next blog post, we will discuss probable cause to arrest.